Providing fascinating insight into the origins of a new conservative vision for the economy, federalism, and domestic and foreign policies, Brooke Jeffrey explores Harper’s successes and failures, and evaluates the likely outcome of his long-term agenda to change Canada into a country most Canadians would not recognize.

We are intensely aware that we are and we must be the government of all Canadians, including those who did not vote for us.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Calgary, Election night, May 2011

Unfortunately there are environmental and other radical groups that … threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda … they use funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national interest.
Hon. Joe Oliver, Minister of Natural Resources, 9 January 2012

Information is the lifeblood of a democracy. Without adequate access to key information about government policies and programs, citizens and parliamentarians cannot make informed decisions and incompetent or corrupt governments can be hidden under a cloak of secrecy.
Opposition Leader Stephen Harper, 2003

The Harper Conservatives do not simply have an agenda, they are on a mission. As demonstrated earlier, they know they are right. They are convinced that they will face many challenges from “enemies” of their conservative agenda, and they believe they must be ever vigilant if they are to succeed. They must also act quickly, and often by stealth. Faced with this daunting challenge, and given Stephen Harper’s take-charge personality, the only logical outcome is the one Canadians have witnessed since 2006 – a government determined to control and limit access to information, and to sideline all forms of dissenting opinion. The Conservatives are, in fact, operating under the very cloak of secrecy that Stephen Harper decried when he was leader of the Official Opposition.

The Conservatives’ behaviour is all the more striking since they obtained their parliamentary majority in May 2011. In his victory speech, Prime Minister Harper promised voters he would govern in the best interests of all Canadians. He assured them that he recognized the need to listen carefully to opposing viewpoints. Many observers reacted optimistically to this unexpected election-night moderation. They even speculated that Canadians would soon see a kinder, gentler Conservative government.

They were wrong. At a time when the issue of bullying captured headlines across the country, the federal Conservatives provided Canadians with a display of bullying at its worst. While other levels of government were taking action to limit or eliminate the problem, the Harper government was busy rolling over any and all opposition. In fact, contrary to those wishful post-election expectations, the Harper Conservatives have spent the time since they obtained their majority exerting their influence wherever possible, pressuring or removing anyone they believe is standing in the way of their agenda. Fear is their primary weapon, and their success has been little short of astonishing.

Virtually every independent source of information or alternative viewpoints normally found in a democracy have been silenced. Internally, the Harper government has exercised strict control over its message with ministers, backbenchers, and bureaucrats through the prime minister’s office (PMO). Externally, it has reduced the free flow of information by limiting media access to politicians and bureaucrats, closing government-run or -funded research organizations, “defunding” civil-society groups opposed to the government’s agenda, and marginalizing political opponents through misleading advertising campaigns. It has also made a concerted effort to bankrupt opposition political parties. At the same time, the government has mounted an unprecedented advertising campaign to disseminate its own message in as positive a light as possible.

Like their electoral strategy, in power the Harper Conservatives’ strategy to suppress information and silence their opponents is both deliberate and carefully planned. The process is a top-down one, driven by the prime minister himself and executed by his personal staff in the PMO. As former adviser Tom Flanagan revealed, Harper is prepared to leave several aspects of his role to others if he considers them to be competent, but communications is not one of them. As chief of staff when Harper was leader of the Alliance, Flanagan confided, “I just let Stephen be his own Chief of Staff with respect to messaging. That’s where he has taken measures of centralization to new levels.” Indeed, while political scientist Donald Savoie’s claim that previous Liberal prime ministers were becoming too powerful was problematic, the same critique when applied to the case of the Harper PMO would be an understatement. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the implementation of a centralized system of control for virtually all information emanating from government.